I know it’s a well known issue and probably beyond CatchyOS grasps.
I have a Razer Laptop 15’’ 2020 with an RTX 2060 with 2 extra monitors attached(thru direct HDMI and USBC dongle).
Of all the Distro I tried (the ubuntu’s,Debian’s and Arch’s) CatchyOS was the only one that didn’t show signs of freezes while using the Live OS. And after installing it back in mid-August , no freezes for few weeks. But in September it started to happen. At first once every couple of days, then everyday and for the pass few days it’s couple of time every few hours. It’s very random , tied to no particular reason. For example; just waving the mouse around over the desktop with all major application closed it can happen.
I was wondering if moving to a different Desktop (LXQT vs KDE), SDDM vs LightDM, wayland vs X11 etc… Any suggestion would help. Let me know.
I’m using CatchyOS default KDE right now
Is the system up-to-date? which kernel version are you using?
First thing I do every time I login , update.
The kernel is the default kernel that was installed back in August with the Nvidia driver and updated since. So it’s the current Kernel-CatchyOS nvidia.I’m not @home right now.
Could you run this and share output?
nvidia-smi -q | grep "GSP"
GPU and Kernel
# nvidia-smi -q | grep "GSP"
GSP Firmware Version : 560.35.03
# uname -r
6.11.1-2-cachyos
General System Tweaks | CachyOS try this.
Created the new file and now it looks like this:
❯ cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-gsp.conf
options nvidia NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0
then executed this:
❯ sudo mkinitcpio -P
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux-cachyos.preset: 'default'
==> Using default configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux-cachyos -g /boot/initramfs-linux-cachyos.img
==> Using drop-in configuration file: '10-chwd.conf'
==> Starting build: '6.11.1-2-cachyos'
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [autodetect]
-> Running build hook: [microcode]
-> Running build hook: [kms]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [block]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'xhci_pci'
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
-> Running build hook: [keymap]
-> Running build hook: [consolefont]
==> WARNING: consolefont: no font found in configuration
-> Running build hook: [plymouth]
-> Running build hook: [resume]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating zstd-compressed initcpio image: '/boot/initramfs-linux-cachyos.img'
-> Early uncompressed CPIO image generation successful
==> Initcpio image generation successful
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux-cachyos.preset: 'fallback'
==> Using default configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux-cachyos -g /boot/initramfs-linux-cachyos-fallback.img -S autodetect
==> Using drop-in configuration file: '10-chwd.conf'
==> Starting build: '6.11.1-2-cachyos'
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [microcode]
-> Running build hook: [kms]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'ast'
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [block]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'aic94xx'
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'bfa'
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'qed'
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'qla1280'
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'qla2xxx'
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'wd719x'
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'xhci_pci'
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
-> Running build hook: [keymap]
-> Running build hook: [consolefont]
==> WARNING: consolefont: no font found in configuration
-> Running build hook: [plymouth]
-> Running build hook: [resume]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating zstd-compressed initcpio image: '/boot/initramfs-linux-cachyos-fallback.img'
-> Early uncompressed CPIO image generation successful
==> Initcpio image generation successful
We’ll see what happens.
Well it did not take long to freeze again. I rebooted, launched couple of apps and it froze.
This change unfortunately did not help.
Try add these kernel boot parameters:
nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia_drm.fbdev=1
After booting up confirm again this:
nvidia-smi -q | grep "GSP"
Output should be like this:
GSP Firmware Version : N/A
Those parameters have nothing to do with GSP Firmware being unavailable. It is N/A for you because you have disabled it via modprobe or another kernel paramater, see General System Tweaks | CachyOS. However, the default config that comes with NVIDIA and by extension CachyOS is GSP enabled.
Yes, you are right, these two things are unrelated, but both are part of the solution.
I have similar setup and had same bad experience.
I had to disable GSP, and add nvidia_drm flags to kernel boot parameters.
Doing these three things resolved my issues, and now I have smooth Wayland experience and no more stutters 
Not really, it’s already enabled by default in the driver (we patched it) and also set via modprobe conf.
Yeah, that is the issue. It causes stutters on my end with RTX 3090. It had to be disabled to get smooth experience.
So this is already set up
sudo cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-gsp.conf
options nvidia NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0
nvidia-smi -q | grep "GSP"
GSP Firmware Version : 560.35.03
Now the nvidia module loaded:
sudo lsmod | grep nvidia
i2c_nvidia_gpu 12288 0
nvidia_drm 131072 9
drm_ttm_helper 16384 1 nvidia_drm
nvidia_uvm 6864896 0
nvidia_modeset 1957888 3 nvidia_drm
video 81920 2 i915,nvidia_modeset
nvidia 11177984 35 nvidia_uvm,nvidia_modeset
Does this helps ?
FYI, I know it won’t be solved by CatchyOS. But like I said before, whatever optimization the CatchyOS team is doing , It’s making my experience bearable.
So what ever tweak I can do to lower the pain I’ll be happy to try.
This thread expose the issue=>NIVIDIA Forum thread about External Monitor Freeze